From It’s Nice That: While magazine redesigns often receive a great deal of attention, few are likely to be more scru­ti­nised than the new-look New York Times Magazine which debuts on Sunday. The Times is the leading news­paper in the US and its magazine is read by nearly four million people every week. When listed, the changes design director Gail Bichler and her new art director Matt Willey have imple­mented sound exhaustive – redrawn fonts, a redrawn logo, a new approach to lay-outs, a new-look version of the online magazine. Add to this a raft of new features and editorial changes (such as a new weekly poem, a column that rotates between four critics and a dispatch from the frontline of internet culture) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new magazine will be unrecog­nisable. · Go to Behind the scenes of The New York Times Magazine redesign →

From Webde­signer Depot: One of the most renowned maga­zines in the world, The New York Times Magazine, has undergone a redesign with two key aims: to carve out a distinct identity, and to embrace the current digital climate. · Go to New York Times Magazine redesigns for the web →

From Dyal Design and Commu­ni­cation: The University of Texas at Austin is a Tier-One research university and the flagship insti­tution of The University of Texas System.

The Longhorn silhouette is perhaps the most iconic logo in sports and is reserved for sports and spirit orga­ni­za­tions. The eighteen academic colleges of the University developed their own logos and brand iden­tities over time.

In a Big Think interview, David Westin, who ran ABC News for 14 years, laid out the steps that NBC needs to take to keep Brian Williams at the anchor desk, and recover from Chop­pergate. First, the network needs to show that it trusts and values Williams. Then, it needs to show viewers that it takes the situ­ation seri­ously and holds him accountable. · Go to Former ABC News Chief: Here’s what NBC needs to do to keep Brian Williams →

From Big Think: The former head of ABC News laments that scandals like the one at NBC undermine public perception of the entire news industry. “Every time this happens, it takes away a little of the cred­i­bility of everybody in the news business,” he says. · Go to David Westin: Brian Williams crisis hurts us all →

In Dr. Michael Shermer’s latest book he claims that we are living in the most moral period of our species’ history. It is a book about moral progress that demon­strates through extensive data and heroic stories that the arc of the moral universe bends toward truth, justice, and freedom. Of the many factors that have come together over the centuries to bend the arc in a more moral direction, science and reason are foremost. The Scien­tific Revo­lution led by Coper­nicus, Galileo, and Newton was so world-changing that thinkers in other fields consciously aimed at revo­lu­tion­izing the social, political, and economic worlds using the same methods of science. This led to the Age of Reason and the Enlight­enment, which in turn created the modern secular world of liberal democ­racies, civil rights and civil liberties, equal justice under the law, open political and economic borders, and the expansion of the moral sphere to include more people—and now even animals—as worthy of moral consid­er­ation. Epic in scope, The Moral Arc is the Cosmos of human history. · Go to Michael Shermer: The Moral Arc →

From NY Times: As secu­larism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insis­tently argued that secu­larism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuck­erman, a Pitzer College soci­ol­ogist, makes this case as fluidly and plea­surably as anybody in his book, “Living the Secular Life.”

Zuck­erman argues that secular morality is built around indi­vidual reason, indi­vidual choice and indi­vidual respon­si­bility. Instead of relying on some eye in the sky to tell them what to do, secular people reason their way to proper conduct. · Go to David Brooks: Building better secularists →